Traditional electronic mapping techniques employ the largely manual, multi-step transfer of spatial data, such as geographic coordinates, from tax maps or other legal maps to digital or photographic representations of geographic locations. Such manual transfer is vulnerable to human error, costly, time consuming, and may result in erroneous maps that are infrequently updated and likely to be stale. Further, traditional methods of mapping involve capturing images of land from an angle orthogonal to the surface of the land. This, however, can be disorienting in that it does not afford recognition or match up with prior live visual memories of the area taken in by the eye, which are nearly always from oblique angles. While there are current systems which provide stores of oblique video images, they are coordinated with manually compiled spatial data such as addresses or coordinates wiped over or overlaid onto the video in a pre or post production stage conducted after the creation of the images. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,635,136, issued Jan. 6, 1987 to Ciampa.
It is a principal object of this invention to provide a mapping and land measurement method and apparatus which can create a digital video image of a portion of land from an analog or digital source, store it in memory, create a data word describing the geographic coordinates of the four corners of the image, and imbed the data word in one horizontal video line of the image.
It is another principal object of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for measuring land by accurately scaling the video image of the land.
It is another principal object of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for determining the elevation of a point on the land.